Johnson's Russia List #5616 25 December 2001 davidjohnson@erols.com A CDI Project www.cdi.org [Note from David Johnson: 1. AP: Gorbachev Ridicules Yeltsin. 2. AP: Soviet Collapse Anniversary Passes. 3. Moscow Times: Valeria Korchagina, Revisiting the 1991 Christmas By Surprise. 4. Interfax: Two "dark horses" to enter Russian politics in 2002 - Astrologist. 5. Interfax: Bin Laden isn't smart enough to have organized Sept 11 attacks - Russian psychologists. 6. Novoye Vremya: Nikolai Popov, WHOM SHOULD WE TRUST? Political off-season: Russians don't know whom to vote for. 7. Vremya MN: Leonid Radzikhovsky, THE HIERARCHY OF 2001. Vladimir Putin hasn't done anything with domestic policy. 8. Obschaya Gazeta: Dmitry Furman, BREAKUP OF PUBLIC POLITICS. The regime is out to do away with unpredictability and uncontrolability. 9. Washington Post: David Hoffman, The Walls Could Not Hold. 10. The Globe and Mail (Canada): Geoffrey York, Past for Russians holds no future. A decade after the Soviet Union's collapse, a new mood of realism has replaced regret. 11. Washington Post: Jackson Diehl, Dynamic Duo Of World Policy . 12. Moscow Times: Boris Kagarlitsky, Euro Sure to Sow Discord. 13. BBC Monitoring: Book on Putins' family life goes on sale in Russia. 14. AP: Russian Reporter Sentenced for Treason. (Pasko) 15. Forbes Global: Heidi Brown, Business brains. (Club 20150] ******** #1 Gorbachev Ridicules Yeltsin December 25, 2001 LONDON (AP) - Ten years after he stepped down as president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev called the man who replaced him in the Kremlin an untrustworthy liar, saying Boris Yeltsin even had his phone tapped. ``While Yeltsin was in office, he tried to control everything I did,'' Gorbachev told the British Broadcasting Corp. in an interview televised Tuesday, on the anniversary of his resignation, which put an end to the Soviet Union. ``My phones were bugged, regional governors were told not to meet me, I was even banned from appearing on live television,'' said Gorbachev, who ceded power to Yeltsin, the Russian president. The enmity between the two men goes back to the 1980s, when Gorbachev brought Yeltsin to Moscow as party chief and then fired him in a dispute over the pace of reforms. In the interview, Gorbachev recited a bitter litany of complaints about Yeltsin. ``He always said he was against the idea of privileges, but Russian czars didn't have the kind of privileges that Yeltsin had,'' Gorbachev said. ``Yeltsin is a strange man, full of tricks, and he's a liar, you just can't trust him.'' Like many Russians who see Yeltsin as an ineffectual leader who let corruption thrive, Gorbachev praised Yeltsin's hand-picked successor, President Vladimir Putin. He said Putin has helped bring stability to a battered Russia and praised his moves toward a warmer relationship with the United States as bold. Gorbachev also suggested his own relationship with Putin is warmer than his soured connection to Yeltsin, who sometimes seemed eager to ignore or humiliate him after his resignation. Under Putin, he said, he even got a special hot line he can use to call the Kremlin. ``Putin is clearly a talented and mature politician - he's cautious, and he knows how to listen,'' Gorbachev said. ``Sometimes he and I get together to discuss different issues.'' The last leader of the Soviet Union recalled his resignation as ``the most dramatic day of my life.'' ``In human terms it was a real blow,'' he said. ``I had to keep calm but inside I was full of emotion.'' ******* #2 Soviet Collapse Anniversary Passes December 25, 2001 By SARAH KARUSH MOSCOW (AP) - Ten years after Mikhail Gorbachev closed the book on the Soviet Union, the anniversary Tuesday went almost unnoticed in the Russian capital. For many, the day the red flag atop the Kremlin was replaced by the Russian tricolor was a day of loss they prefer not to dwell on. On Dec. 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union. He handed over the so-called nuclear suitcase - containing the codes and communication equipment for launching the country's nuclear missiles - to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. It marked the end of a process that had been accelerating since the previous August, when pro-Yeltsin forces defeated an attempted coup by Communist hardliners. In a country that loves anniversaries, the date was noted by only one major newspaper. NTV television ran a documentary about the Soviet Union's final days, but most channels didn't mention it during their news broadcasts. Asked what anniversary fell Tuesday, most people approached on Red Square were stumped. Once reminded, many recalled feeling deep anxiety as they watched Gorbachev give his farewell speech on national television. ``There was a certain amount of fear. The young people were happy, but I wasn't young,'' said retiree Nina Kuznetsova as she strolled with her friend across the snow-dusted square. Poverty and social instability over the past decade have made many Russians nostalgic for the Soviet Union. According to the ROMIR polling agency, 55 percent of Russians believe life was better before 1991. The number of those polled or margin of error weren't given. ``The worst thing is that there is no stability. You have no idea what will happen tomorrow,'' said engineer Valery Pugachyov. ``There's more freedom for creative people, for intellectuals, but there's also more freedom for criminals.'' Many Russians who approve of the end of Communist rule still lament the Soviet collapse. Having grown up in one country, they find it difficult to suddenly feel patriotic about a new one. ``Reforming it (the country) was necessary; breaking it wasn't,'' Pugachyov said. ``We lost our homeland, as it seemed to us then,'' said Alexander, a 47-year-old St. Petersburg resident who declined to give his last name. ``I never recall this anniversary without feeling pain. It wasn't necessary to destroy everything to achieve well-being.'' Despite the nostalgia, many concede that there are some advantages to life after 1991. Moscow has become a colorful, world-class capital. Gone are the lines for sought-after consumer goods. People have greater freedom to say and do what they want. In a sign the pluses are beginning to outweigh the minuses in Russians' minds, nostalgia has been waning in recent years, ROMIR reported. The number of people who prefer the present over the pre-1991 era increased to 32.6 percent this year from 21.8 percent in 1999. ``Things change,'' said Yuri Ryumkunasov, rushing past the mausoleum of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, where long lines of admirers waiting to see him have disappeared. ``You have to accept life as it is.'' ******* #3 Moscow Times December 25, 2001 Revisiting the 1991 Christmas By Surprise By Valeria Korchagina Staff Writer Ten years ago, as much of the Western world was opening Santa's presents or sitting down to Christmas dinner, Mikhail Gorbachev decided to close the final chapter in the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. "Dear fellow countrymen and citizens," Gorbachev began his televised address to the nation. "In light of recent events and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, I hereby resign the office of president of the U.S.S.R." The announcement was a formality. The Soviet Union was an empty shell following a parade of independence declarations by the republics and the creation of the CIS by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus on Dec. 8. Nine more Soviet republics joined the CIS later in December. By Dec. 25, all that remained of the defunct state was its president. Gorbachev has never explained why he chose to step down on Dec. 25 -- perhaps because what was Christmas Day in the West was an ordinary Wednesday in Russia, falling about a week before the big New Year's holidays. In a documentary shown Dec. 13 on RTR television, Gorbachev said that after it became clear the Soviet Union was gone, he needed time to think over what he should do. The documentary, called "Nash Gorbachev," or "Our Gorbachev," was part of a series dedicated to Nobel Prize winners from Russia. But instead of paying tribute to the winner of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, it follows the Soviet president during his final week in office in 1991. The footage -- some of which had never before been released -- was combined with shots of Gorbachev reflecting on that time a decade later. Looking back, Gorbachev accepts part of the blame for the collapse of the Soviet Union, saying the reforms he launched in 1985 moved too slowly and could not match the speed of historical change. "We were late. I think my darned self-confidence got in the way," he said recently. His address to the nation on Dec. 25, 1991, lasted only a few minutes. While he was still speaking, with the red Soviet flag at his side, the red flag above the Kremlin was being replaced by the Russian white-blue-red tricolor. The new masters of the Kremlin took his departure so literally that they moved in the next day. "They gathered in my office and drank a bottle of whisky for their 'victory,'" Gorbachev said with contempt at a news conference Friday, The Associated Press reported. "I have never spoken to Yeltsin again." Filming History Igor Belyayev, a filmmaker who spent hours and days with Gorbachev during that last week in the Kremlin, directed the new documentary. "This is a film about a man whom Russia failed to understand and appreciate," Belyayev said in an interview last week. "I want him to be loved by the people while he is still alive. I want him to be appreciated and loved as a person." The original filming was initiated by Yegor Yakovlev, who had taken over as chief of Gosteleradio, the state television and radio company, after the previous management was fired in the aftermath of the failed August 1991 coup. According to Belyayev, Yakovlev felt the need to somehow record history. That was not easy, given that at the time, Russia's leadership was extremely sensitive to any attention paid to Gorbachev. A solution was found in the form of a joint Russian-American project by CNN and Gosteleradio to film Gorbachev's exit. The actual filming was done by Belyayev and his crew, but the plan was for CNN and the Russians to come up with two different films. While CNN showed the film around the world soon after the events, the Russian part of the project stalled. "I was left with all these tapes, which I promptly took home and stuck under a sofa, where they remained for 10 years," Belyayev said. "I wasn't even sure that the footage hadn't deteriorated." When RTR asked Belyayev, a veteran documentary director, if he wished to pick a Nobel Prize winner from Russia to do a film about, the answer was obvious. "I had a debt [to Gorbachev] that I needed to repay. And I am very happy now that I've done it," Belyayev said. Belyayev has warm memories from those days with Gorbachev. "I sensed that Gorbachev liked being with me. He relaxed when he spent time with me. I was a person very close to him, I felt like his ally, that I was helping him," Belyayev said. The two men had known each other since both were students at Moscow State University, although they were not close. Belyayev, 69, now sees Gorbachev, 70, as a symbol of his generation. "We are a lost generation. We were born too late to become war veterans, and too early to become cosmonauts," Belyayev said. "Gorbachev has become the figure, the main representative of this generation, of our views, of what we essentially are." Last Kremlin Days Gorbachev's last days in the Kremlin appeared uneventful. With no country to rule, he is left only with the nuclear suitcase and an office with a plaque that says: "M.S. Gorbachev, president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." In Belyayev's film, he is shown holding talks with officials, receiving visiting diplomats and taking care of unfinished business, such as passing over to fellow Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn the KGB documents related to his persecution in the 1960s and 1970s. Gorbachev said he would not resort to force to stay in power. "If I'd ever wanted to remain in the structures of power, that wouldn't have been too difficult," he said in 1991. "I care little about prestige. If that were the case, if that were in my nature, I wouldn't have started the reforms and wouldn't have given up the power I had." He continued on the same theme 10 years later. "There is no power tougher and stricter than the power of democracy," Gorbachev said. "And the nomenklatura failed the test of democratic power. The intelligentsia failed this test, too." He still regrets that the Soviet Union collapsed, and remains bitterly disappointed that it was allowed to collapse without a fuss. "I was astounded. The intelligentsia was silent, the press was silent, everyone was silent. The republics were silent. So no one needed a union state," he said this month. "And what is Russia without the Soviet Union? I don't know. A stump of some sort." At Friday's news conference, he accused Yeltsin and the leaders of the other republics of ruining the Soviet Union out of personal ambition. "I was shocked by the treacherous behavior of those people, who cut the country in pieces in order to settle accounts and establish themselves as tsars," Gorbachev said, The Associated Press reported. He said he couldn't oppose their action because of fear that would push the country toward chaos. "I couldn't choose the path that might have led to rift and civil war in a nation brimming with nuclear weapons," Gorbachev said. As unappreciated as he is in Russia, Gorbachev remains optimistic that the world will remember him well. "I still don't know what happiness is," he said in the documentary. "But on the other hand, look at how fate has rewarded me. It allowed me to fulfill myself to lead such a process of renewal that went so far and involved the whole world. God! What other happiness could there be." ****** #4 Two "dark horses" to enter Russian politics in 2002 - Astrologist MOSCOW. Dec 24 (Interfax) - Two "dark horses" will emerge on the Russian political scene in 2002, well-known Russian astrologist Pavel Globa told the press on Monday. They will appear, as it were, from out of the blue in the Chinese Year of the Horse, Globa said. Most probably, they will become known when the leadership of the leftist movement is replaced, he said. One of the new men will become a charismatic leader and work out a sound economic program incorporating neo-communist slogans, Globa said. The new man will not challenge President Vladimir Putin because he will not become president until 12 to 13 years from now, when the period of the opposition of Mars ends, he predicted. The year 2002 will be "a positive period," Globa said. "The president will remain, he will serve out his full term without any doubt," he said. An economic rise is about to start, but the spring will see a minor crisis originating in the countries of the East, he said. Cabinet reshuffles are likely in the summer and fall, but they will benefit Russia, Global said. ****** #5 Bin Laden isn't smart enough to have organized Sept 11 attacks - Russian psychologists MOSCOW. Dec 24 (Interfax) - International terrorist Osama bin Laden could not have headed the organization responsible for the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, Director of the Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism Prof. Mikhail Fersht said at a press conference in Moscow on Monday. The intelligence and luck coefficient of bin Laden is too low, the scientist said. "We studied bin Laden's personality based on his speeches on Arab television," Fersht said. This method is called "a distant psycho-diagnosis," he noted. The televised speeches of the international terrorist show that his "consciousness is narrow," the scientist said. "His vocabulary is limited, and he is fixed on the topics of religion and terrorism. Such people are sick." Thus, bin Laden "could not have planned and carried out such a large-scale operation as the terrorist acts that shook the world," Fersht said. He said there might be "a strictly classified organization unknown to the leading secret services and the press" that perpetrated the terrorist acts on September 11. The hypothetical leader of this organization has "an enormous intelligence coefficient," the scientist remarked. "The organization has a huge intellectual potential incomparable to that of any of the world's scientific and intelligence organizations. The colossal luck of its leaders, who have managed to stay a secret to all intelligence services of the world for such a long time, is especially disquieting," Fersht said. ******* #6 Novoye Vremya No. 50 December 2001 WHOM SHOULD WE TRUST? Political off-season: Russians don't know whom to vote for Author: Nikolai Popov [from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html] PARTY MERGERS ARE CAUSING NEITHER DELIGHT NOR AVERSION; WHAT'S MORE, THE MAJORITY OF RUSSIANS HAVE NOT NOTICED IT AT ALL. FOR INSTANCE, IF RUSSIANS HAD TO VOTE IN DUMA ELECTIONS RIGHT NOW, MOST PEOPLE WOULD EITHER NOT KNOW WHOM TO VOTE FOR, OR WOULD NOT PARTICIPATE IN THE ELECTIONS. It is off-season in Russia, so Russian politicians have nothing to do but party-building: to merge all parties, or on the contrary, to form many small parties. So far, party merging has caused neither delight nor aversion; moreover, the majority of Russians have not noticed it at all. For instance, if at present Russians had to elect Duma deputies, 21% of people would not know who to vote for, 18% would not participate in the elections at all, and another 18% would mark "against all" box. The rest more active voters would vote for the new party, the united Unity and Fatherland- All Russia bloc - 16%; and 13% of respondents would vote for the Communist party. Yabloko would receive 6% of voters; the Union of Right Forces would receive 4%, and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia would also receive 4%. In these terms, there would be only three parties in the Duma. Another recent idea is prolonging of the presidential term from four to seven years. Perhaps, if at present Vladimir Putin is the president, the people will support this idea. However, over the past year and a half since the last presidential elections the attitude towards the prolongation of the presidential term was negative: 55% to 57% of respondents would not want the presidential term to be prolonged; 23%-25% of respondents support prolongation of the presidential term to seven years; and 20% were unsure of their opinion. Of all respondents, 73% of Yavlinsky supporters were and 66% of Zyuganov's electorate were against prolongation of the presidential term; however, 52% of Putin's supporters are also against prolongation of the presidential term; and only 27% support this idea. Overall, when people vote at the parliamentary elections or support some party, they supposedly send their elected representatives to serve in a worst and dishonest organization. The Duma is one of five the most dishonest organizations, the traffic police traditionally holds the first place. The Duma and political parties are on the second place: 28% of respondents called them "rather dishonest"; overall, the honesty anti- rating of the Duma and political parties totaled 65% and 67% respectively. The Russian population does not like business tycoons - they are the third on the list: 61% of respondents consider private enterprise to be intrinsicalyy dishonest. Communal services are the forth on the list, 60% of people distrust them. The next are local authorities: administrations of towns, rayons, settlements - 20%, 35%, and 55% respectively. The Federation Council, regional, territorial, and republican administrations and courts are in the same group. The army and the media are neighbors on the 'dishonesty' list - 49% and 44% respectively. And the presidential administration is the most honest structure - 37% of respondents consider it an honest organization. On the positive part of the list are social provision structures: 45% of respondents believe they are mostly honest, and 34% of people consider them dishonest. Sixty percent of people think school teachers are honest; social organizations, such as women's and veterans' are believed to be honest by 60% also; and 58% of people respect ecological organizations. The trust level of the church is also rather high: 52% of respondents consider it honest; although 17% of respondents think it is rather dishonest, and 7% of people believe it is "very dishonest". After such a dishonesty rating, the rating of corruption of various institution in people's minds is understandable. Nineteen percent of respondents call the law enforcement bodies the most corrupt institution. The traffic police are in the second place - 12%; the Duma is third - 7% and the Cabinet is the fourth - 4%. Business, courts, and political parties are the least corrupt insitutions - only 3% of people think so. (Translated by Arina Yevtikhova) ******* #7 Vremya MN December 25, 2001 THE HIERARCHY OF 2001 Vladimir Putin hasn't done anything with domestic policy Author: Leonid Radzikhovsky [from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html] PUTIN'S PRO-WESTERN CHOICE IS SERIOUS AND PERMANENT; ESSENTIALLY A STRATEGY OF INTEGRATION INTO THE WESTERN SOCIOPOLITICAL SYSTEM. BUT RUSSIAN LEADERS USUALLY ENCOUNTER PROBLEMS AT HOME. AND PUTIN'S DOMESTIC POLICY REMAINS A MYSTERY, JUST AS IT WAS A MYSTERY TWO YEARS AGO. Boris Yeltsin made Vladimir Putin president exactly two years ago this week (officially, his presidency dates from the moment of his election in March 2000 but he actually became head of state in August 1999). That is why the political results of 2001 in domestic policy may be viewed as the political results of the first half of Putin's rule. There may be different opinions on whether the new era began on September 11. There can be no doubt, however, that a new President Putin was born that day. Putin is the most western of all Russian politicians. He alone - not Nemtsov or Yavlinsky - would have dared say that the United States was entitled to make a retaliatory strike, and even that terrorists rather than Americans would be to blame for all future casualties. The answer to the question of "Who is Mr. Putin?" is provided in foreign policy. When the United States opted to withdraw from the ABM treaty of 1972, and Russia took the news in its stride, it became absolutely clear that Putin's pro-Western choice was something serious and permanent, that it was essentially a strategy of integration into the Western sociopolitical system. Russian leaders usually encounter problems at home. And Putin's domestic policy remains a mystery, just as it was a mystery two years ago. Putin had unprecedented oil prices and unprecedented rating playing into his hands all this time. It sees, however, that Putin cannot accept the praise for either. Mikhail Gorbachev's rating in 1985, 1987, and 1988 was even higher that Putin's. Even more surprisingly, Boris Yeltsin's rating in 1992 and 1993 was fairly high! And the Russians' love was anything but fiscal then - living standards did not grow under Gorbachev and collapsed in 1992 and 1993. This is what we should have been stunned. As for Putin, it would have been more than odd had his rating failed to soar when economy was more or less recovering and living standards grew some as well. Putin's rating even survived his decision to take a pro-American position, not precisely popular with most Russians until then. On the contrary, pro-American tendencies in Russia grew when Putin chose the West... Even that is hardly surprising - Russia loves its presidents, has always loved them. The problem is, all domestic policy of the past two years was restricted to declarations alone. Chechnya is a bit quieter now, but the end of the war is not even in sight yet, and talking about Chechnya's reintegration into Russia is not even decent. The famous hierarchy of state power? Here are a few fresh examples. Take the elections for the Moscow municipal legislature. The mayor has a hierarchy here, controllable democracy, and - what really counts - the whole machine is working smoothly. Compare it with the election in Yakutia - where this same hierarchy has already defied ten attempts to establish it, with the whole nation watching and booing. Or take the personnel fiasco. The much-discussed "St. Petersburg personnel revolution" is not something Putin would have chosen, had a choice been possible. It is just that he doesn't know whom he can rely on. What about the events of the last two months, when the two teams went at each other's throats and the president pretended he didn't see anything? What do they indicate? Either Putin is building a system of checks and balances this way - or he isn't in control of his team, or whatever passes for it in the Kremlin nowadays. If it is the latter, then we are facing a political catastrophe, no less, and the former possibility is not much better. There are problems with political means; there are even worse problems with political ends. Putin has proclaimed a liberal socioeconomic policy more than once. The Union of Right Forces is overjoyed - the president himself is conducting our symphony. But the music is what is lacking. Income tax rates have been lowered, this is the only thing that has been done. Great. But this is only part of the whole system of measures, right? Not even half a step has been taken to move from Russia as a natural resources provider to Russia as a technological state. We have the oil to last our lifetimes - it is also an economic strategy, and quite a liberal one. It took Russia a great deal of effort to have the parliament pass the law on land use, but the most important issue - agricultural land - is not even mentioned in it. Russia lacks a functional law on bankruptcy. The military reforms are restricted to hunting down conscripts. As for the reorganization of natural monopolies, that is something else again - we all know how Alexei Miller came to Gazprom, how he has been treated there, and how the Kremlin cannot change anything. Reorganization of the Interior Ministry? Citizens are afraid even to ask anything about it. They still prefer to steer clear of police stations. Too much remains undone. Saying what has been done is easier. The regime has gelded the Duma, the Federation Council, and the media; and rooted out opposition. There is nothing alarming about this - dictatorship is the last thing Russia should worry about. The problem is there will be no public resistance to the authorities. All right. But what have the authorities been doing? Nothing, at least in terms of domestic policy. All we can do is wait. Nothing really depends on us. ****** #8 Obschaya Gazeta No. 51 December 2001 BREAKUP OF PUBLIC POLITICS The regime is out to do away with unpredictability and uncontrolability Author: Dmitry Furman [from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html] JUST LIKE THE PREVIOUS REGIME, THE PRESENT ONE IS NOT OUT TO SAFEGUARD ITSELF FROM REAL THREATS, SINCE THEY DO NOT EXIST AT ALL. IT AIMS TO RULE OUT EVEN THE REMOTE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH THREATS. TO ACHIEVE THIS, IT NEEDS ABSOLUTE PREDICTABILITY AND CONTROLLABILITY. Battles and events are disappearing from open public politics. A "lack of alternatives" is imposed from the top, from the president, spreading down and encompassing all spheres of public politics. The no-alternatives president must have formed a similar parliament with no-alternative votes. The upper house has all but reached this "Soviet" condition already. The next Duma will probably be like it, or as close to it as possible. The situation is such that only one question remains unanswered at a regional election - who the regime decides will be the winner and who will be ousted from the race altogether. The regional elections themselves are as alternative-free as the presidential election was. They are also gradually ceasing to be events. The regime's actions cannot be explained only by the survival instinct and the desire to put its own people into all key positions. The actions are clearly too much, even in terms of survival. Just like the previous regime, the present one is not out to safeguard itself from real threats, since they do not exist at all. It aims to rule out even the remote possibility of such threats. To achieve this, it needs absolute predictability and controllability. The recent election of the new Federation Council chairman is typical from this point of view. The election itself is not nearly as interesting as how it was arranged. Stroyev was not merely replaced with Mironov. He was relieved "of his own volition", forced to say all phrases appropriate to the occasion and recommend the successor. For that, Stroyev was given an order. This is how well-disciplined leaders of the second echelon were dismissed in the Soviet Union. Stroyev's successor was elected by the "soviet-type" majority. It follows that the regime wants more than a banal election of the man it needs - it wants the ballot predictable by all 100%, it wants the replacement to be a natural, routine, and absolutely alternative-free move. Distribution of seats on the Moscow municipal legislature between parties on the eve of the election should probably be ascribed to the same tendency (some observers see it as the model of future parliamentary election). It is clear that the municipal legislature elected predictably and without alternative cannot pose any threat to the authorities - just the way the previous legislature did not pose any. All the same, similar eagerness to root out any independence is at play here, he desire to turn any event into a ritual where everything is decided beforehand. That is why the unification congress of the Unity and Fatherland takes place in so working an atmosphere that observers assume that nothing at all is going to happen at the next congresses. It took Bolsheviks about a decade about a decade in the driver's seat to root out real public fighting. The future ruling party is not going to root it out. There will be no public fighting to root out in the first place. That is why everything independent and spontaneous is alarming, regardless of whether it is dangerous or not... All the same, some uncontrollable things occur, some obscure parties and movements are established. At a future date, they may in theory pose a threat. Right now, they do not fit the ideal of absolute order. That is why their representatives are summoned for the Civic Forum which marks the beginning of formalization of the sphere. The TV-6 network is not dangerous either. But it is uncontrollable, and when uncontrollability and spontanaeity are to be driven out of public politics, they have to be driven out of the sphere of discussion of public politics as well. The disappearance of political events from the public sphere doesn't mean their disappearance altogether. It was so in the Soviet Union, it is so now. The power struggle is not to be eradicated. Only its forms change. It is changing from a battle for the love of the masses into a battle for the love of the ruler - and moving from the open sphere to the clandestine. Public political events of revolutionary eras eventually split into public non-events and non-public events. Public events become interesting with minor deviations from the ritual, not with their essence. It is in these deviations that observers always try to see reflections of what transpires behind the scenes. It was so with Boris Yeltsin's speech for example where he thanked the presidential administration. The conclusion was immediately drawn that the presidential administration was under the attack of chekists from St. Petersburg. No one knows anything for a fact but it is clear that real life takes place over there, behind the scenes, and real battles take place there, in the impenetrable sphere of relations between Putin and his entourage, old and new. The process of elimination of unpredictability is not over yet, and the regime has a lot to do yet in this sphere. Stagnation is not what is coming, something else is. It isn't hard to predict what kind of nation Russia is going to become five or ten years from now. It will be a nation where results of all votes at all levels will be 90% identical. It will be a nation where nothing at all happens in the public political sphere, and where rituals alone are performed - the ritual of election, ritual of parliamentary meetings, ritual of regular presidential meetings with civil society, etc. It will be a nation whose citizens will get a glimpse of the real power struggle only from rumors and results - sudden resignations or arrests for corruption. It is impossible to say as yet to what extent this prediction is going to come to pass. One thing is clear: when life is absolutely squeezed out from a ritualized and controllable public sphere, it suddenly breaks through from an unexpected direction, and the public sphere may become much too spontaneous for comfort. ******* #9 Washington Post December 25, 2001 The Walls Could Not Hold By David Hoffman Ten years ago tonight, the flag of the Soviet Union was lowered at the Kremlin for the last time. Looking back, many of the reasons for the swift demise of the Soviet state now seem clear: the collapse of the Communist Party, the revolt of the republics, the strain of the arms race, the implosion of central planning and the amazing forces Mikhail Gorbachev unleashed in glasnost and perestroika, which only accelerated the final denouement. There was another reason, too, perhaps not crucial to the final collapse but worth remembering. It is that the Soviet leadership could not preserve the walls it had built around a dissatisfied society. The outside world was seeping in, and society yearned to get out. The protective barriers that the party erected -- and the KGB enforced -- were breached by ideas, trade, culture and technology. There's a useful lesson here for those regimes still striving to erect and fortify such walls. In the 1980s, one of many ways the world could be seen from a Moscow apartment was through the VCR. When VCRs first appeared, bootleg Hollywood movies were hugely popular, passed hand to hand. A friend told me how they would gather round and watch three or four films in a row, until dawn. They observed closely: the clothes, the manners, the talk, and the meaning of money and wealth. They were in awe when a Hollywood film character casually opened the refrigerator in his apartment: It was always full! It was a stark contrast to the economy of shortage that gripped the stagnating Soviet Union. Words and thoughts breached the prison walls despite the ever-watchful KGB. A literature professor recalled once listening to the BBC, when it was not being jammed, and hearing President Reagan's June 1982 address to the British Parliament. In that speech, Reagan said the Soviet Union "runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens." The Soviet news agency Tass blustered in reply that Reagan had "slandered the Soviet Union." But what really happened was that Reagan had breached the wall -- the professor ran out on the street to find friends to tell them the remarkable thing he had just heard on the radio. A circle of young economists at a Leningrad institute was avidly reading a dog-eared copy of "The Use of Knowledge in Society," by the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, a work that extolled the virtue of free prices. It was a heresy in the Soviet system of state-controlled prices. But the walls could not keep that knowledge out. It may be hard to imagine today, but the Soviet authorities tried to lock out the world. They strictly controlled travel abroad, monitored mail from outside, and put overseas publications under lock and key. They saw danger in copy machines, too, which were also locked up, because they could make one smuggled book into hundreds. But in the end, all these efforts failed. Gorbachev's achievements in this are large, including the opening up of forbidden history, the rise of political pluralism, and the momentous end of the Cold War. One of his less remembered contributions was permitting the first private businesses, the cooperatives. These firms spawned a generation of smart young hustlers who also breached the walls of the ailing Soviet state. A favorite scheme was smuggling in personal computers, which were good as gold. A scientist told me he brought a computer home from a trip abroad, just as things were loosening up in the 1980s. He sold it in Moscow for 70,000 rubles, or the equivalent of his official salary for the next 40 years. He decided not to get another, but the young hustlers soon were importing them by the truckload. The climax came with the August 1991 coup, which brought tens of thousands of people into the streets against the coup plotters, protests that were a spontaneous demonstration of civil society at work. Today autocrats and authoritarian regimes still try to pull off what the Soviet leadership could not sustain. They snuff out civil society, keep a choke hold on information and trample on the rule of law. Yet, their societies are struggling for fresh air, often against great odds and at considerable sacrifice. They are listening, just as in the Soviet days. In the decade since the Soviet flag came down, the world has undergone a technology revolution; the bandwidth for global communication is larger than ever. One can only imagine the headaches of today's thought police. Lock up the copy machines? That was simple. Now, just try to lock out the Internet. The writer, a former Moscow correspondent, is foreign editor of The Post. ******* #10 The Globe and Mail (Canada) December 24, 2001 Past for Russians holds no future A decade after the Soviet Union's collapse, a new mood of realism has replaced regret By GEOFFREY YORK MOSCOW -- On Christmas Day in 1991, Nina Zdanovich's world fell apart. Her Soviet motherland, one of the great empires of the last century, collapsed into a collection of independent states. A decade later, Ms. Zdanovich has already forgotten that tomorrow is the anniversary of that momentous event. She remembers the pain she felt when the Soviet Union collapsed, and she still blames the breakup for the economic woes of the past 10 years -- yet she admits she would never want the empire back. "We need a union, but a different one, maybe like the European Union," the 46-year-old Moscow economist says. "In Soviet times, I talked too much and I was always afraid that I would suffer for that. Now I can talk freely and nobody sends me to jail. My relatives have emigrated to Israel and nobody punishes me for that either. And there are all kinds of goods in the shops now." Most Russians still feel a vague sense of regret at the loss of their mighty empire. But the nostalgia is slowly fading, replaced by a new mood of realism over their destiny. An opinion poll by the ROMIR agency last month found that 30 per cent of Russians now believe that the Soviet collapse was inevitable. Two years ago, only 20 per cent said the breakup was inevitable. The same poll found that 72 per cent of Russians regret the Soviet collapse -- still a high proportion, but down five percentage points in the past two years. "People are becoming less and less nostalgic," said Yelena Bashkirova, president of the ROMIR group. "A change of generations is taking place. For younger people, the USSR is a part of history that they read about in their textbooks. People are more realistic now. Even the Communists do not feel that we can recreate something like the Soviet Union." Most Russians are indifferent to this week's historical milestone. Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the day when the Soviet flag was hauled down from the Kremlin, leaving 15 struggling new nations in its wake. The Russian news media have paid little attention to the anniversary, and most ordinary Russians aren't even aware of it. When the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, held a news conference last Friday to mark the event, he found himself addressing a half-empty room. Less than two dozen journalists bothered to attend, and many were visibly bored, chatting on their cellphones or slipping out of the room early as Mr. Gorbachev rambled on. "Younger people don't remember and don't care," Ms. Bashkirova said. "Even among those who are nostalgic, they're not recollecting the Soviet Union -- they're just recalling the old way of life, how they could travel cheaply to the Black Sea resorts and so on." Among the Russian political elite, there is still some gloominess at the disappearance of the powerful Soviet empire, which had been feared and respected around the world. Even those who helped destroy the empire are burdened with dark memories of its final days. "We felt somewhat depressed, as if we had just buried a close relative," Sergei Shakhrai, a former aide to ex-president Boris Yeltsin, said in an interview on a Russian Internet site this month. He said the Soviet Union fell apart because of an "envy virus" among the 15 Soviet republics as they watched others gaining autonomy. Without the Soviet collapse, there would have been a civil war, he said. In a debate organized by a Moscow newspaper this week, some analysts argued that the collapse was inevitable. "The Soviet Union was always based on violence, tyranny and despotism, and it couldn't have survived," scholar German Andreyev said. "It cannot be restored, unless there is another Stalin or Hitler." Others, however, saw the collapse as a disaster. "For the Soviet republics, except the Baltic states, the breakup was a national catastrophe," said Mikhail Delyagin, head of a Moscow economic think tank. "Industrial output fell, investment dropped, life expectancy dropped. Ten years of degradation have brought us back to the status of a Third World country." Much of the Soviet legacy, of course, lingers on. President Vladimir Putin has restored some of the most famous Soviet symbols, including its national anthem. At a deeper level, his government has revived the old Soviet idea of a powerful bureaucratic state that dominates most aspects of life, including the media. But ordinary Russians have found much to be grateful for in the past decade. "Thank God the Soviet Union broke up," said Svetlana Kuibysheva, a 75-year-old Moscow pensioner. "I worked as an engineer at a factory in Soviet times and my salary was high enough, but I couldn't buy good clothes or good food or anything." ******* #11 Washington Post December 24, 2001 Dynamic Duo Of World Policy By Jackson Diehl Most of the world looked at the Bush administration's unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty as an affront to Russia and its latterly pro-Western president, Vladimir Putin. That's why the spin offered by one senior White House official was so intriguing: As he described it, this was not a one-sided American decision but something like a consensus strategy by the Bush and Putin teams. The two presidents, the official said, both came to the conclusion that modifying the treaty wasn't going to work and that a unilateral U.S. withdrawal was the best remaining option. They figured Putin would take flack from his military, and Bush would be called a unilateralist. But both sides, the official explained, judged that they could handle the criticism and thus dispose of the issue. Though that account may be a little disingenuous -- Putin has been candid about his disappointment with the ABM withdrawal -- it conveys something important: the sense of an insular White House-Kremlin syndicate that is dedicated to redrawing U.S.-Russian relations and mutually overcoming the resistance in Moscow and Washington. Though the reality is surely more complicated, that is increasingly how the Bush-Putin relationship is experienced by European governments, Russian politicians and even the professional policymakers of the State Department and Pentagon. At the center of the bubble is the white-hot personal bond between Bush and Putin and the understandings the two men apparently have forged, especially at their post-Sept. 11 meetings in Shanghai and Crawford, Texas. Each president, in turn, has been pushing his side to accept far-reaching changes in the U.S.-Russian relationship on short notice and with little consultation. Most famously, Putin overruled his defense minister and forced his military to go along with the basing of U.S. forces in Central Asia, the key to the U.S.-Russian partnership in the Afghan war. But Bush is pushing boundaries, too. In addition to the ABM decision, it now seems clear that the controversial proposal to include Russia in decision-making by the NATO alliance was another product of the Bush-Putin channel -- one that took the Pentagon brass and a number of NATO governments by surprise. The idea generated a storm of criticism in Europe and Washington when it was floated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson and now is being painfully walked back by the policy pros. But British officials leave little doubt about where the trial balloon came from -- Robertson and Blair, they say, were only following Bush's lead. In Moscow, the critique of Putin has been that he is rapidly leading Russia westward without bothering to wait for the consent of his political elite or public and that he is getting a poor bargain for his trouble. Now, in the wake of the NATO initiative, some of the same concerns are being raised about Bush. The grumbling is muffled in Washington, with its wartime political climate -- especially because some of those most alarmed are members of the Republican Party. But some of those in Europe with the most reason to be concerned about the Russian relationship have started to speak out. During a visit to Washington this month, Poland's new foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, observed that the administration seemed to be rushing to reorganize Western institutions to accommodate a new Russia, rather than focusing on making sure that the promised change in Moscow really takes place. "We believe Putin's choice of the West is a real one, but we still don't know if it is permanent, a choice made by Russia and not just by Russia's current leader. That needs to be tested over time," said Cimoszewicz. "Why should we reorganize the world two months after something has started?" Though it has been one of the most stalwart supporters of U.S. policy within NATO since joining in 1996, and borders on Russia, Poland first learned of the plan to create a new NATO-Russia council only after Blair already had dispatched a groundbreaking letter to Putin. The Poles -- like some U.S. officials outside the White House -- were taken aback by the reach of the plan, which would give Russia equal standing with NATO's 19 members in decision-making on a wide range of issues. In one Blair variant, all matters that were not specifically excluded by NATO automatically would be referred to the council, giving Russia de facto veto power. The likely consequences of that step would be dramatic -- as Cimoszewicz points out, if such a body had existed during the past six years, Russia would have blocked NATO's three interventions in the Balkans, and Slobodan Milosevic still would be in power in Belgrade. "The whole mechanism of NATO could be slowed down or even paralyzed," he said -- an outcome that was, after all, one of Putin's explicit goals before Sept. 11. Cimoszewicz, and other worriers in Europe and Washington, have been promised safeguards that will ensure that NATO remains able to act independently of Russia. Draft provisions now being hammered out at the State Department and Pentagon would quietly neuter the original scheme, delivering a body not much different from the existing NATO-Russia council. Eventually, however, the formula will come back to the two presidents and the restricted space where they have been reinventing policy. As the bureaucracies in both capitals now understand, that channel can produce an entirely unexpected outcome. ****** #12 Moscow Times December 25, 2001 Euro Sure to Sow Discord By Boris Kagarlitsky In this country, no one trusts banks or the ruble, and as a result, people usually conceal envelopes stuffed with hundred-dollar bills on shelves between books or in wardrobes between sheets. From January, however, a new mysterious currency -- the euro -- will enter circulation. Maybe we should all convert all our savings into euros posthaste. Any discussion in Moscow about globalization or the world economy of late ends with someone in the room posing a question along these lines. On such occasions, I answer that I cannot vouch for the dollar, even less for the ruble and that the euro inspires still less confidence. Western Europe is embarking upon a grandiose experiment, and not just an economic one. Paris's Le Monde Diplomatique writes that the euro is a currency "without soul or culture." That's a very French thing to say. But, in fact, money is not only a means of payment (as political economists would have us believe), but also a cultural symbol of sorts. It should have a history. The euro, however, is the handiwork of bureaucrats and technocrats. Even the appearance of the notes attests to the lack of culture and impoverished imagination of its creators. Each denomination is adorned with nondescript walls and doors. And there is not a single human face. European Union bureaucrats explained that any historical figure who is popular in one country may arouse negative emotions in neighboring countries. However, if these gentlemen are speaking of pan-European traditions and of shared history, then there should be some historical figures that embody this. I, for one, do not understand who in Europe could be irritated by portraits of Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Columbus, Moliere, Mozart, Goethe or Einstein. But therein lies the tragedy -- the eurocrats themselves probably can't remember a single one of these names. Literature, philosophy and art have little, if any, meaning for them. Out of the whole of European history, they have only learned about Napoleon and Bismarck, and even then only superficially. Moreover, the euro has another failing that is even more serious. The intention of the project's initiators was that a single currency would assist and facilitate European integration. In practice, it will likely have the opposite effect. The stability of a currency depends, at the end of the day, on the state of a country's economy. And the economies and levels of development of different EU member states differ considerably. While northern European member states, by and large, have few problems in achieving low inflation, Mediterranean countries have difficulty. In preparation for the introduction of the euro, all participating member states had to lower inflation to levels set by Brussels. While it is possible to achieve these levels in the short term, it is much harder to support them stably over the long term. Sailors know full well that the speed of a squadron is defined by the speed of the slowest vessel. Otherwise the ship gets left behind. Exactly the same holds for the euro. If the European Central Bank chooses to support a high exchange rate, the result will be that "backward" countries will find that they are no longer competitive (as the unfortunate example of Argentina shows). If, on the other hand, the decision is made to meet the "backward" countries halfway, then Italy, Portugal, Spain and Greece will export inflation to Germany and Finland. On the one hand, national governments are deprived of the usual monetary instruments to influence the economy and social development. And on the other hand, at the European level there will inevitably be serious conflicts over monetary policy. These conflicts will not be easy to resolve as the interests of the member states are diametrically opposed. Everything will end in some kind of bureaucratic, fudged solution that will make things worse for everyone. Inflation will be too high for the north and too low for the south. Even worse is the fact that introduction of the new currency coincides with a world economic crisis. It would be hard to come up with a more inappropriate moment to launch such an ambitious project. Bad luck is not really the issue here. Technocrats simply live in their own little world and rarely think about how their projects will function in real life. The currency was supposed to unite but will no doubt lead to greater discord. In fact, that's usually the way with money. Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist. ******* #13 BBC Monitoring Book on Putins' family life goes on sale in Russia Source: NTV, Moscow, in Russian 0700 gmt 25 Dec 01 [Presenter Denis Soldatikov] The [Russian edition of the] book "Piquant Friendship" [German: Heikle Freundschaften] goes on sale in Moscow today. It contains some details of private life of Russian president's family presented by a German friend of Lyudmila Putin. In general, this is a story of acquaintance with three Russian women. The book would hardly be written and, moreover, published in Russia if the wife of the future Russian president was not one of the friends of Irene Pietsch. Several Russian newspapers and magazines refused to publish excerpts from the book apparently for the same reason. They did not offer clear explanation but noted that in any civilized country politicians would be glad to have such a PR promotion. The author of the book, Irene Pietsch, the wife of a German banker, was on friendly terms with Lyudmila Putin for three years. At that time Vladimir Putin was a deputy mayor of St Petersburg. The book reflects her impressions of the president's family. For example, Irene says that Putin did not allow his wife to use a credit card abroad for economical reasons. Sometimes he made rather sharp comments about his wife. Once Putin said that a monument should be erected to him for the years he spent with Lyudmila. Friendship between Pietsch and Putin was cut short in 1998. [Pietsch, speaking to camera in German with Russian translation superimposed] These are vicissitudes of fate. In 1998 Putin became a security service chief. Lyudmila phoned me before his appointment had been officially announced in the press and said that it had happened. It has happened - this is exactly what she said. She was not happy at all. She also said that we had to stop our friendly contacts. They have not been resumed yet. [Broadcast at 0708 gmt; video shows German and Russian editions of the book and photographs of the Putins] ****** #14 Russian Reporter Sentenced for Treason December 25, 2001 By ANATOLY MEDETSKY VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AP) - A military journalist who reported on alleged environmental abuses by the Russian navy was convicted of espionage and sentenced Tuesday to four years in a maximum-security prison for treason. A military court in Vladivostok found Grigory Pasko guilty of illegally attending a secret meeting of Russian Pacific Fleet commanders in 1997 and possessing notes he made at the meeting, where officers discussed the results of naval maneuvers. Pasko had initially been accused of divulging state secrets on the combat-readiness of Russia's Pacific Fleet to Japanese media. He says he has been prosecuted in retribution for his reports of alleged abuses by the navy, including claims it dumped radioactive waste into the Sea of Japan. The 20 months Pasko spent in custody pending an earlier trial will count as time served, so Pasko must spend 28 months in prison, Judge Dmitry Kuvshinnikov said. He dismissed four of the five counts of Pasko's indictment, saying they were unsubstantiated. Pasko, who was also stripped of his military rank, was placed under arrest in the courtroom in Vladivostok immediately after the sentencing. Defense lawyer Anatoly Pyshkin called the verdict unjust and said the defense would consult with Pasko on whether to appeal. Appeals can be made to the Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme Court within seven days of the verdict. U.S. Consul General James Shoemaker, who was present in the courtroom to observe what he called ``a case for human rights,'' said the decision was ``a bit unexpected.'' In his first trial, Pasko was acquitted in 1999 of treason but found guilty on lesser charges of abuse of office. He appealed the verdict, seeking a full acquittal, and prosecutors also appealed. Russia's Supreme Court sent the case back to trial in Vladivostok with a different judge. Prosecutors had demanded a nine-year sentence in a maximum-security prison - three years less than the minimum for high treason. Five counts were dropped from the initial 10-count indictment. According to the defense, the main charge against Pasko was that he passed a drawing of a naval facility for the storage of spent nuclear fuel to Japanese media. Pasko's case is one of several involving whistle-blowers and researchers accused of passing allegedly classified information to foreigners. ****** #15 Forbes Global January 7, 2002 Business brains By Heidi Brown Russia's economy will improve, with help from the new breed of realistic idealists in charge of top companies. In Russia bad governance is expensive. The National Project Institute, a think-tank in Moscow, says that Russian companies spend at least 10% of their revenue bribing government officials. The institute was founded in 1999 by Club 2015, a group of 49 businessmen intent on reforming Russia and reducing corruption. They are making headway. The club proposed five economic reforms; three became law in 2001, and a fourth is due to pass in 2002. Not a single bribe was paid. They would probably have failed if Vladimir Putin had not become president, in May 2000. Indeed, the wheels of reform were set in motion several months earlier, when, as prime minister, Putin asked his minister of trade, German Gref, to produce a ten-year plan for social and economic development. Gref worked closely with members of Club 2015 to produce one with a very ambitious (and wholesome) agenda: the reform of pensions, taxes and customs, the protection of privacy and the education of workers. It also calls for the development of infrastructure, financial transparency and the nurturing of a civil society. The club was the idea of Sergei Vorobiev, the managing partner of the Moscow office of Ward Howell, a U.S. headhunter. The Russian government had just announced that it would default on its loans, a move that infuriated Vorobiev and his colleagues. "We were mad that our country allowed itself to default,"says Vorobiev, 37. "We simply couldn't live with this image of corruption." Most Russians, benumbed by official ineptitude, threw up their hands in disgust, but Vorobiev decided to do something. He contacted the brightest, most successful young entrepreneurs he knew. Eighteen of them formed Club 2015 in 1998, naming it for the year when Russia will become, Vorobiev and his friends hope, a worthwhile country in which to live and do business. Vorobiev has a son. "If he were of age, he wouldn't stay [in Russia] now," he declares. "But by 2015, he will be 18 and able to choose." If Russia becomes what his father hopes it will, he'll choose to stay. Club 2015's members, 20 of them under the age of 40, either run some of the most successful Russian companies or are high-ranking executives of foreign companies. One of its members is Pavel Teplukhin, founder of Troika Dialog Asset Management; with $500 million to look after, it's the largest such outfit in Russia. Andrei Arofikin, who was a director at the Moscow office of Credit Suisse First Boston, now heads the club's National Project Institute, which is financed by billionaire George Soros. Club 2015's members may be idealistic, but they are not naive. "This is all about how to get out of the swamp, not how to fly,"says Vorobiev. One of the club's activities is to peer into Russia's future with the help of scientists, artists and philosophers (this is Russia, after all), thus generating ideas for reform. The five laws they proposed included one to limit the number of licenses needed to do business, another to simplify regulations and another to rationalize the tax code. "Club 2015 is gaining prominence thanks to the new administration,"says Clifford Gaddy of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "But a lot of other people were pushing those same policies as well. There's been a whole climate change in Russia." Besides guiding Russia to economic success, the club also aims to help members think in new ways about Russia's problems. The club invites speakers, including top Western businessmen, writers and artists. "We are learning to think with the right side of the brain, which is hard for those of us who are scientists," says Vorobiev. The club has even invited as a guest speaker a specialist in ancient Slavonic myths. "This is very applicable to today's conflicts,"says Vorobiev. "We have learned that you must understand what the reality is first before you can change things. You cannot destroy someone else's myth; instead, you must create a new reality and a new myth." ******